Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Why do you roam the jungles?
by Baba Sheikh Farid

Says Farid,
Why do you roam the jungles with thorns pricking your feet?
Your Lord dwells in your heart.
And you wander about in search of Him.

/ Image by That Guy Who’s Going Places /

The poem today is a short one. Simple. We might almost be tempted to rush past it because it seems too simple and rather obvious. But I would encourage all of us, myself included, to pause for an extra moment and just contemplate these few lines.

That closing couplet where he declares that the Lord dwells in the heart and yet we wonder about in search of God. I certainly was caught by that pattern myself in my early searching. I intensely, even desperately wanted a direct experience of God — the Divine, the Eternal, however we want to name that transcendent reality. Yet I was hampered by the same sort of romantic exoticism that we often suffer from, particularly in the West — this idea that mystical insight and truth can only come from an exotic culture. I couldn’t imagine deep insight coming from a person who looks like me or a culture I recognized. I hungrily read about spirituality of India and China and Native Americans. In my attempt to pare my life down to get to that essential truth, I was often cutting away connections to the culture in which I was raised. I was alienating myself intentionally from what I knew because it felt so unbearably mundane.

And frankly that path works really well up to a limited point. It frees us from the prejudices and cultural assumptions that we are all raised in. It brings about important internal confrontations, forcing us to re-assess who we are and the world around us. It also creates a profound problem for spiritual progress beyond that point: the more we define the Divine as somehow outside, outside our world, and most importantly outside our own selves, the more we create an internal gulf that can never be bridged when ultimately that true, essential spark is not somewhere “out there.” It is never found outside ourselves or outside our world. It’s always, always found within at the truest point within ourselves. This is why many traditions refer to the Divine as the Self. It is the Self of our selves, it is the self of all of us. It is the Heart, the center of our being. A certain amount of external seeking and wandering can help galvanize our energies and free us from limiting assumptions and patterns. But we must always, always return to the Self of selves, to the Heart.

We may call what we seek “Lord,” “Him” (or “Mother” or “Beloved”), but even those words become a trap. They are other. It’s useful to externalize the Divine in order to create focus, a goal, have an object of devotion. But when we’re really, truly ready to melt, it can only ever be recognized as the true self that we already are and not other than what we are.

I had a whole other commentary planned this morning, but I saw this poem and went off in a new direction. So much for plans!

Recommended Books: Baba Sheikh Farid

Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth	Anthology of Great Sufi & Mystical Poets of Pakistan	Sri Guru Granth Sahib	Sri Guru Granth Sahib

Baba Sheikh Farid Pakistan (1173 – 1266) Timeline Muslim / Sufi Sikh

Baba Farid is remembered as the first great poet of the Punjabi language — and, just as importantly, as one of those rare figures whose voice crossed every line that was supposed to contain it.

He was born Fariduddin Masud, near Multan, into a family with some learning and some means. As a young man he traveled to Delhi and became a disciple of the Sufi master Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, entering the Chishti order — the Sufi lineage that, more than any other, took root in India and shaped its spiritual imagination. The Chishtis were known for poverty, for music and poetry as paths to God, and for opening their doors to everyone regardless of caste or creed. Farid took all of that to heart.

He is often called Ganj-i-Shakar — “Treasure of Sugar.” The stories told about how he earned that name vary, and they have the flavor of legend rather than record, but they circle the same idea: sweetness that came from somewhere other than the world.

What is clear is that he chose obscurity. Rather than remain in Delhi near the court and its patronage, Farid settled in the small town of Ajodhan — today Pakpattan — and lived there in deliberate poverty, teaching, praying, and turning away the gifts that powerful men kept offering him. People came anyway. Among those who found him was the young Nizamuddin Auliya, who would become on of the most beloved Sufi saints in the subcontinent.

Farid wrote in Punjabi, the language people actually spoke, rather than the Persian of the educated and the courtly. That choice mattered. It meant his verses could travel by memory, in the mouths of farmers and weavers, and they did — so widely that when the Sikh Gurus gathered their scripture generations later, more than a hundred of Farid’s verses were included in the Guru Granth Sahib, where they remain sacred today. A Muslim Sufi, held in reverence within Sikh scripture, and honored still by Hindus.

His poems are short, plain, and unsparing. They talk about death without flinching, about the body’s frailty, about the foolishness of chasing what cannot last. But the hardness is never cruelty — underneath it runs an ache of longing, and a tenderness toward other people that can stop you in your tracks: *Do not break anyone’s heart, for each heart is a priceless pearl.* He keeps pointing in the same direction, which is inward. *Your Lord dwells in your heart. And you wander about in search of Him.*

His shrine at Pakpattan still draws crowds each year. The city of Faridkot carries his name. Eight centuries on, people are still reciting him.

More poetry by Baba Sheikh Farid

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